Hardcover

eBook

A Bird in Flight Leaves No Trace is a new translation of a beloved Zen text by Huangbo, with new commentary from contemporary Zen (Korean: Seon) Master Subul, who has revolutionized the strict monastic training in koans and adapted it for lay meditators in Korea and around the world.

The celebrated translation of this work by John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, introduced countless readers to Zen over the last sixty years. This new translation, together with its commentary, aims to interrupt the striving mind: not only can thinking be an obstacle to attaining enlightenment, but you also go astray when you try to rid yourself of thoughts. In passage after passage, Huangbo and Subul remind you to let go—let go of clinging, let go of hopes and aspirations, let go of the attachment to subject and object, let go of knowing and not knowing. Only then will your primordial buddha mind, no different from that of the Buddha himself, be revealed. As Huangbo declares, “Mind means no-mind and attainment means there is nothing to attain.”